Broom

A hand tool with bristles fixed to the end of a handle, used to sweep loose debris from a surface.

Classification

Mechanisms: wiping, abrading
Tasks: sweep, clean
Materials: broomcorn fiber, synthetic fiber (nylon, polypropylene), plastic or wood handles
Historical materials: grass, broomcorn (Sorghum bicolor) straw, twigs and branches (besom-style), broom plant bristle (Genista/Cytisus), wood

Principles

Bristles catch and drag loose particles via friction;flexible bristles conform to surface irregularities;handle extends reach and applies leverage, reducing bending.

Evolution

~1981–1975 BCE (Egypt)
Grass sweeping implement[1]
Cataloged by the Met as "brush," not "broom" — the terminology is blurry this early. Made of grass, from the tomb of Meketre at Thebes.
ca. late 2nd century BCE – late 2nd century CE (Han dynasty)
Split-cane broom fragment (Han-dynasty China)[2]
A broom head built up from bundles of split cane slivers, bound in stages rather than tied once: a first handful lashed with string wound twice near the end, then a second bundle laid against the first and lashed through and around the first binding in turn. Excavated from a Han-dynasty frontier watch-station (T.XIII) on the Great Wall near Dunhuang, in the arid Gansu desert — dry conditions unusual enough to preserve an organic broom that would otherwise have rotted away.
undocumented, longstanding traditional form
Besom[3]
A bundle of birch twigs bound around a handle with two binds of willow or wire, giving a rounded head; the head is fixed to the handle with a nail or a wooden peg driven through a bored hole. No fixed invention date for the form itself, but the Tadley besom-making trade in Hampshire, England is believed to date back to at least the 14th century.
19th century – present
Wikimedia Commons. Pearson Scott Foresman. Public Domain.
Corn broom[4]
Made from broomcorn (Sorghum bicolor) fiber lashed to a handle. By 1800, Shaker Brother Theodore Bates of the Watervliet, New York community had invented a broom vise that clamped and fanned the fiber bundle so it could be stitched flat with twine — replacing the round bundle with the flat-headed shape that became standard.

Textual evidence

ca. 2000 BCE composition; surviving manuscripts copied in the early 2nd millennium BCE (Old Babylonian period), most from Nippur.
Two Women B (Sumerian literary text)[5]
A Sumerian disputation in which two women trade insults over which of them is the better wife. One accuses the other of failing basic housework; the line reads "she sweeps the house (and) sprinkles it" — sweeping cited as a marker of a properly kept household.
Composition — scholarly consensus dates the book of Isaiah's various sections across the 8th–5th centuries BCE; the oracle against Babylon (chapters 13–14, which includes this verse) is generally attributed by scholars to a later hand writing during or after the exile, not the 8th-century prophet. Oldest surviving manuscript — the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ), Dead Sea Scrolls, ca. 125 BCE.
Isaiah 14:23 (Hebrew Bible)[6]
A metaphorical use, not a literal broom: "I will sweep it with the broom of destruction" (NRSVUE), part of a taunt announcing Babylon's total ruin. Using the broom as an image for complete sweeping-away only works if the tool and its function were already ordinary to the text's audience.

Related objects

brush
whisk broom
dustpan
mop
vacuum cleaner

Classification

Principles

Evolution

Grass sweeping implement[1]

Split-cane broom fragment (Han-dynasty China)[2]

Besom[3]

Corn broom[4]

Textual evidence

Two Women B (Sumerian literary text)[5]

Isaiah 14:23 (Hebrew Bible)[6]

Related objects

Sources